The Senate in Turmoil as 2009 Begins

As we enter 2009 tomorrow, the United States Senate is in turmoil, as it is now clear that there will only be 98 Senators when  the Senate convenes early next week.

The bold, defiant action of Governor Rod Blagojevich of Illinois, under arrest on charges of trying to sell Barack Obama’s Senate seat to the highest bidder, and facing impeachment charges by the Illinois legislature, to go ahead and nominate former state Attorney General Roland Burris to that seat, despite all the Democrats in  the present Senate and President Elect Obama making clear that no one appointed by Blagojevich would be seated, is an unprecedented situation with no easy solution short term. The fact that Burris is also African American and would be the only one in the Senate just complicates the issue further, bringing in the race card.

Additionally, the Minnesota Senate race between Senator Norm Coleman and Al Franken is still unresolved and looks as if it is headed for court after an official result is announced early next week, with Franken unoffically ahead by only 49 votes. 

These two seats might not be filled for several months at this rate, and additionally, Colorado and New York face governors appointing new senators to replace Ken Salazar and Hillary Clinton once they are confirmed as members of President Obama’s cabinet.  Meanwhile, both incumbents will still have the ability to vote on early actions that might be taken by Congress before Obama’s inauguration.

One can only hope that the Senate’s mess will be resolved sooner rather than later!

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published.

You may use these HTML tags and attributes: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <s> <strike> <strong>

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.